I mean, I really can’t describe the feeling I got when I got my hands on it. First time I played it I was 7 years old, yes ironic since it’s a symbolic number in the Halo universe.
My friend’s older brother had an Xbox, and me and my friend used to watch him and his friends play. One day we walked in and he was playing alone, a new game, Halo CE. He put a controller in each one of our hands and started a custom game. Kicked our a$$e$ ofc. But the game was so magic and beautiful. It was something I had never seen before (since I had only played Super Mario, and games on Nintendo64.)
Either way, I fell in love with the game. My dad bought me an Xbox a few months later with Halo CE (Because I probably only talked about Halo since that day).
I started playing the campaign and oh my god, I just felt like a super soldier running around slaying aliens. Colorful blood everywhere. And when I got to the second level, Halo… When I first got cared for by Cortana, asking if I was alright and if I could move, (I didn’t even understand english that well, because I’m not from a country with English as primary language) . I went out of the pod and saw the most beautiful map I had ever seen. I wanted to know everything about this world. I had never seen a game/mission that looked so big and alive. I felt like I was there, like I was part of it.
Me and my friends (who played it at my house, and bought it after that) played Halo CE for countless hours, for years to come. My first nights ever staying up late was to play Halo CE. We didn’t sleep until we beat the game on Legendary, seriously every sleep over. And when the game was over I always felt kinda sad, I wanted more. We wanted more.
We also had fun in custom games. Just drive a ghost over a tank until we got tired of flipping. We did this in campaign too. Tried to stay alive, jumping from bridges, etc. Tried everything you could possibly think of as a kid. Ran into every narrow place on the map, jumped on everything to try and get to places you shouldn’t go, or couldn’t go, just to explore further. Was it something behind the big mountain the we hadn’t seen? Had the developers hid something from us? We found the talking grunt on the last map just running around exploring every inch of the map, and omg did we think that was awesome? We wanted to take him with us in the ship.
It was the most fun we had ever had in the gaming world. When parents (would it be mine or theirs, depending on where we slept) went by our rooms to see if we were sleeping, we quickly turned of the screen to the tv. And it made a sound as if it was electric. The fat ones did that sometimes when it had been on for hours. And we pretended to sleep.
When they left, we waited a while, then turned it on again and kept playing. That game was one of a kind. The feelings you got when you saw it for the first time. The ships, the stars, the planets, the weapons, the covenant, the flood. Everything was new and original.
And my friend’s father even bought the book and explained stuff we didn’t understand so I got even more hooked to the lore, the backstories. The kidnapped kids, everything was just so interesting, sad and mystic, but awesome at the same time.
I could have probably made a much better post but I had little time. Like I said, I can’t really describe the feeling. It was like, as a kid you always wanted to have the coolest toys, go to the coolest places. (Like Pizza planet in Toy Story, I always wanted to go there and for it to be real)
Halo was like that. And when the other games dropped, you got customization and that made it feel even more like you were a part of it. (You.could choose color in CE, for customs and that was it)
And the mystery with MC not showing his face. Total genius move by Bungie. Made it so much more interesting and made you connect even more to the character.
Edit: I actually signed out to go to sleep, closed my eyes for ten minutes then I realized I forgot to mention the music. THE MUSIC, SERIOUSLY. The music in the menu, the music in the missions. I had never heard such beautiful music.
